16 posts from August 2010

Domestic

Congress’ Serial Hits on Food Stamps.
With some shabby sleight of hand, Congress has begun tapping into the
food stamp program for the hungriest Americans to help pay for
lawmakers’ higher election-year priorities. [The New York Times]

Initiative Aims to Improve Africa's Food Security
. Improving Maize for African Soils (Imas) aims to improve food
security and the livelihoods of people across Africa by
developing better maize varieties that can thrive on the little
fertiliser being used on the continent’s farms. [Creamer Media's
Engineering News]

A New Look at Dry Areas.
Countries in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere, with vast dry
tracts threatened by increasingly frequent droughts as the climate
becomes more capricious, will have to rethink food production. [IRIN]

U.S. Envoy: Climate Talks Slipping Backward.
Global climate talks appear to have slipped backward after five days of
negotiations in Bonn, the chief U.S. delegate said Friday, adding that
some countries were reneging on promises they made last year to cut
greenhouse gas emissions. [The Associated Press]

A Grim Future for Tropical Forests.
A new study reveals that continued deforestation and logging, coupled
with the effects of global warming, will devastate precious tropical
environments and the plants and animals that live there by the end of
the century. [Discovery News]

Bungoma, Kenya — It’s
maize harvesting time in western Kenya. Tearing the husks off her corn,
Jentrix Mesache can hardly believe her eyes—or her ears.

The
ears of corn are thick and long, perhaps three times larger than the
ears she harvested last year. As proof, she retrieves an ear of corn
from the previous harvest and holds it up next to one she has just
picked. It is a stark contrast, scrawny (last year) versus strong (this
year).

“It’s like a miracle to me,” she says. Last year her maize
harvest from her half-acre plot didn’t even fill two 90 kg bags; that,
says the 30-year-old mother of three, was barely enough to feed her
family for two months.

This year, she’s expecting to fill at
least 10 bags. That will mean the difference between feeding her family
all year or struggling through the traditional “hunger season”—the
period that begins when the food of the previous harvest runs out and
agonizingly stretches until the next harvest comes in.

More
Health Woes for Hungry Kids. Children and youth who experience
hunger appear more likely to have health problems, and repeated
episodes of hunger may be particularly toxic, according to a report in
Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. [Health24.com]

Fuel
To Fight World Hunger. Researchers are joining the fight against
world hunger by tapping into a local renewable resource. [Keloland.com]

International

The
Price
of Bread Could Rocket. Wheat prices have doubled in the last two
months, notching up the fastest food price rise an economist said he
said seen in the last 20 years. [IRIN]

U.S.
Government Pledges $95M to Fight Hunger. Two U.S.-funded programs
signed agreements with the Government of Bangladesh on August 3 as part
of a newly expanded effort to reduce hunger and improve nutrition in
Bangladesh. [The Weekly Blitz]

The
Plight of America's New Poor. The economic recovery in the US has
stalled and for the 15 million unemployed Americans, the land of
opportunity seems anything but. Almost 50% of the unemployed have not
had a job for at least six months, double the level of previous
downturns. [BBC]

Fighting
Generational Poverty in Richmond's Iron Triangle. A new federal
program called Promise Neighborhoods has economically disadvantaged
communities all over the Bay Area scrambling to be included. This year,
the program is giving out $500,000 awards to organizations in
neighborhoods around the country that struggle with low educational
achievement, violence and other effects of poverty. [KALWNews.org]

International

Samasource,
a Cyber Solution to Global Poverty. Leila Chirayath Janah was well
on her way to becoming another cog in the wheels of multinational big
business. Then she decided it was wrong to let the world's poor
people's massive talent go to waste. [The Daily Maverick]

Niger's
Markets are Full Yet Famine Shadows the Dusty Roads. Nearly 12
million people in Niger – about 80% of the population – are now
affected by food insecurity, a status that indicates they have as few
as 10 days' food supplies remaining with all other income-generating
activities exhausted. [The Guardian]

The
Brits Have Us Beat on Child Poverty. In the past 10 years, the
United States and the United Kingdom have been through a lot of the
same economic troubles. But somehow in this past decade, Britain has
made major inroads in reducing child poverty while the U.S. has
stagnated. [The New America Foundation]

Climate Change/Environment

Is
Climate Change Creating More Environmental Refugees than War in
Africa? Climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most
serious threats that humanity may ever face. The impact of climate
change on livelihoods is creating a new kind of casualty: environmental
refugees. Rising sea levels, desertification, weather-induced
flooding, and frequent natural disasters have become a major cause of
population displacement. [ReliefWeb]

If you attended Bread for the World's National Gathering in 2009, or if you had the good fortune to attend Lobby Day in 2010, you might remember that worship included music from a singer named Bryan McFarland. (Bryan even appears in the CBS documentary on religion and politics that featured Bread's 2009 National Gathering).

Bryan, a Bread member and Presbyterian pastor from North Carolina, is also a songwriter who has made music a major part of his ministry, sharing
his talent not only through live performances and CDs but also at
retreats.

He has put together a couple of albums about faith and hunger. His latest work, titled "...until all are fed...," is due out in October. Click here
to learn more about the album.

Bryan is funding production of the CD with small donations from ordinary folks from around the country.You can help too. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which works with Presbyterian congregations and partners around the globe to alleviate
hunger and eliminate its causes.

Below is the title song of the album "...until all are fed..."

Domestic

Clock
Ticking on School Lunch Legislation. As the clock ticks down on
the 111th Congress, child and health advocacy groups are lobbying
furiously for lawmakers to reauthorize the nation’s school lunch
program with an expansion that would provide free, healthy meals to
tens of thousands of additional children and tackle the problem of
childhood obesity. [Education Week]

Achieving
the Millennium Development Goals: Education is the Key Missing Link.
While the Administration’s outline includes useful ideas on tracking
development outcomes and increasing transparency and accountability, it
also represents a missed opportunity to deliver on Obama’s commitment
to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education to achieve
universal primary education. [The Brookings Institution]

[Blog]
A Many Headed Beast. This week, we carried a piece about a new
cross-country poverty index devised by a group of researchers at the
Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, which is designed to
capture several dimensions of poverty at once. [The Economist]

Maize Project
‘Breaks the Barriers’ of Rural Poverty. More than 200 residents
of Saphukanduku Village in Transkei have broken the barriers of poverty
with help from a R1.6million investment by the Accelerated and Shared
Growth Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA). [Daily Dispatch Online]

1.3
Million Villagers Face Hunger. More than 1.3 million people in
Zimbabwe’s rural areas will require food assistance during the peak
hunger season in early 2011, according to the latest UN estimates shown
to ZimOnline at the weekend. [The Zimbabwean]
Climate Change/Environment

Food
Production Must Double. With the global population expected to top
9.2 billion by 2050, experts say the world will need to repeat the
Green Revolution that saw food production double between 1960 and 1985.
[The Sydney Morning Herald]

Stay Connected

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which we live. Bread for the World is a 501(c)(4).